Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsAlways ends with you quitting
Reviewed in the United States on July 14, 2018
The problem with Surviving Mars is that you can never win the game. Literally. There are no victory conditions, no goals set by the game, no markers of success or failure. Whether you're doing a great job or killing off scores of colonists, the game just keeps on truckin' until it ends, and it always ends the same way: you get tired of it and quit.
That's a fairly fatal design flaw, which is a pity as just about everything else about the game is well-done. The only major gameplay issue is that the optimal way to play is to race to build the Space Elevator wonder. As soon as you've constructed that, you can order Food from Earth so cheaply that you no longer need to worry about producing it on Mars. Since producing food on a large scale is a pain in the backside, I'm personally grateful for that flaw, but I'm not sure it's what the designers intended.
The gameplay is addictive. The graphics and sound are quite suitable for a simulation game. There are a variety of issues to manage, although the job of dealing with personality quirks and employment status of all of your colonists can get daunting once you have a few hundred of them. There is the option to play the game with "mysteries" which are sci-fi stories that fit in to your campaign (although, again, solving a mystery does not give you a "win" or end the game). You can select which country/company initially funds your mission, which will give you bonuses or penalties. A number of different customization options makes the game very replayable.
But what's the point? Again, you play until you get bored and then you quit. By definition, there's no other way the game ends. While some people may be content to "set their own goals" (play until you have 1,000 colonists then quit, play until you've built all the wonders then quit), would it be so hard for the designers to allow players to actually select those as victory conditions, so that when you've reached 1,000 colonists you get a "You win; keep playing?" message as opposed to merely deciding to quit?
I had a lot of fun and very late nights with the game when I first got it, but I don't bother with it anymore. Playing a game you can't win got boring fairly quickly. If victory conditions are ever added in a future patch, I'd start playing again in a heartbeat.
